Slide

Teamcenter Product Configurator

Managing increased product variability complexity

Engineering complexity explodes as products become more complex, product cycle times become shorter, markets and manufacturing go global and customers demand more choices and customization.

Companies need a solution that enables them to manage this complexity, from product inception through manufacturing, in a simple way that enables re-useand commonality and eliminates engineering cycles on products that will never be offered on the market.

Teamcenter Product Configurator has been designed to address these needs through a variability backbone across the Siemens Digital Industries Software portfolio, providing a single, consistent definition of product features, rules and product content across a company’s entire product definition and execution process.

Managing complexity

Product variability permits companies to offer good, better, best products to meet market needs at price points and feature levels that customers want, providing greater return on product development investments.

Complexity is a byproduct of increased product variability. Product complexity is growing exponentially due to market demands, technical complexity, corporate strategy, product/process variety, consumer demand, financial constraints and competitive pressure.

Product configurators play a vital role for managing this product complexity. With features allocated to products, and rules to govern their compatibility with each other, companies develop, maintain and grow product variants efficiently.

Product Configurator explained

With Teamcenter Product Configurator, the variability definition is separated from the content definition, allowing the autonomy needed for configuration experts and content engineers to work semi-independently but still maintain a tight link where the two domains come together. Features defined in the configurator can be used to define variant content such as Bills of Material (BOMs) and CAD designs.

The separation additionally ensures that variability and rule definitions can be applied to multiple structures and across multiple domains such as requirement and system definitions, design, engineering, manufacturing and service.

A dictionary within the configurator provides a single, global definition of each product feature, and is used to define clear ownership and control. Based on market requirements, product planners add and manage features in the corporate dictionary and control the release and consumption rules for those features within a product family or across product families. Planners can allocate features for use in products and product lines along with rules governing usage of features. This dictionary enables quick summaries of where features are used and allows packaging of features into groups, making it easier to design, source and manufacture.

Take control of your product variants

Take control of your product variants Addressing ever-increasing pressure to offer greater choice and variety in their products to meet customer expectations, Teamcenter Product Configurator enables manufacturers to specialize a product to their specific needs. The configure-to-order approach, which brings product specialization closer to the customer, is growing in importance. Using traditional processes, configureto-order can overwhelm resources with duplicated data that can introduce errors into product development. Teamcenter Product Configurator delivers a single variant management backbone that makes certain that all disciplines are working from a common understanding of product configurability.

Teamcenter Product Configurator not only allows all engineering disciplines to see and manage the overall product configuration needs but also enables each engineering discipline to manage areas of configuration unique to its domain within a common framework.

Utilizing early and continuous validation with real product data, issues can be identified and resolved long beforethey surface on the manufacturing floor. Manufacturing engineering then generates the Bill of Process leveraging the same configuration information that has been defined upstream in engineering.

Benefits

  • Bring product variability management up front in the product definition and design process to maximize re-use and commonality while reducing engineering effort
  • Deliver full visibility of the variance of a product suite, enabling each discipline to manage areas of configuration unique to their domains within a common framework
  • Manage all aspects of configuration under an integrated change management solution
  • Enable the digital twin using a common variability thread for highly complex products, with sophisticated impact analysis across the product suite

Features

  • Intuitive, grid-based user experience delivers real-time feedback to validate and resolve any conflicts within the conditions created against the content
  • Coordination of change across planning, system engineering, BOM, design, manufacturing and after-sales with comprehensive impact analysis to support product decisions and quality
  • Architecture breakdowns for feature organization and to guide product development
  • Product suite breakdown including product lines and market-offered product models
  • Controlled feature sharing across the product suite including variability scoping and feature availability
  • Standard rules to govern feature compatibility within products
  • Features, product lines and rules as extensible business objects
  • Effectivity and comprehensive change management with impact analysis
  • Guided and manual user experiences including those for engineering configuration and impact analysis
  • 3D product variant visualization
  • Leverage common or mapped architecture to apply the common variability backbone for multiple domains of product data across requirements, system/logical definition, CAD, CAE, BOM and manufacturing consumption
  • Intuitive grid-based user interaction and understanding without writing complex rule code
  • Produce an accurate digital twin for any product variant on demand

Video/Content source: Siemens.com

Make an Enquiry

FAQ's

What is product configurator in Teamcenter?

Teamcenter Product Configurator has been designed to address these needs through a variability backbone across the Siemens Digital Industries Software portfolio, providing a single, consistent definition of product features, rules and product content across a company’s entire product definition and execution process.

How does a product configurator work?

The configurator automates the process of selecting different product options, so customers can select product options and interact with a visual representation of that item in real time. In other words, the configurator visualizes product options on the spot to help shoppers see what they are getting.

What are major features of product configurator?

  • Clear Bill of Materials. Every custom product needs a bill of materials (BOM), no matter how simple it is. …
  • Visual Models. …
  • CAD Models. …
  • Safeguards. …
  • Easy, Professional Quote Generation.

Why is product configurator important?

Rather than manually generating quotes and specifications, businesses use product configurators to automate this process, speed up the time needed to issue a quote, reduce errors, and dramatically shorten time to market. Product configurator software builds a smooth sales process and an improved customer experience.

What is a 3D product configurator?

A 3D product configurator is a way to let your customers personalize a product to their specifications. The added bonus of the 3D element is that it allows your customers to interact with your products online in real-time.

Book a Meeting

Schedule free consultation with our experts